Why people make music

This lesson asks you to identify reasons why people make music in their daily lives and the contexts in which they make it, and to recognise musical forms from different communities, times and places. The museum offers one case: qawwali, a devotional song of Pakistan and India. The singing, the listening and your own family's music are for your class to bring. ¹

Put two questions to any music: what is it made for, and where is it heard?

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was born at Lyallpur, now Faisalabad, into a family in which qawwali had passed down for some six centuries. ² He began as the tabla player of his father's party. ² His father had wanted him to be a doctor or an engineer, but relented when he saw his gift. ² After his father's death in 1964 he became its lead singer in 1965 alongside his uncle, and from 1971 he led it. ²

His father wanted another kind of work for him, then changed his mind. What could a child show a grown-up to change their mind about something, and why would it work?

• Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: his family, the party he led, and the places where he sang.
• Rahat Fateh Ali Khan: a singer of the next generation of the same family.

Read about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Write down two places where music is made in your own life, and beside each one who listens.